Although known as a prairie province, as a matter of fact, only five per cent. of Manitoba is rightly included under this designation. This is in the southern part, where the fertile Red River Valley grows some of the finest wheat of all Canada. Three fourths of the province is covered with forest, mostly second growth, which has sprung up since the great forest fires in the past swept over the country. In the north are also vast regions of barren land and muskeg, whose only value is in their game and fish. Near The Pas, four hundred and eighty-three miles north of Winnipeg, is a region of minerals, where deposits of copper, gold, and silver are known to exist, but where the developments as yet are of no great importance. About five hundred miles north of Winnipeg is a belt of clay land similar to that I have described in Ontario. This belt is level and well adapted to mixed farming. The Winnipeggers tell me that the railway built toward Hudson Bay has done much to open that part of Manitoba to settlement. The climate is said to be warmer than that of Winnipeg, owing to the absence of windswept plains and the proximity of the waters of Hudson Bay, which have a temperature higher than those of Lake Superior. Hardy grains and vegetables can be grown, and strawberries have been raised at The Pas. The first charter to build a railway to Hudson Bay was granted as far back as 1880, and the project has been under discussion more or less ever since. The various Canadian trunk lines at different times have made plans for extensions to the Bay, and I am told that James J. Hill once owned a concession to build such a line. The railway from Winnipeg to The Pas on the Saskatchewan River was completed about 1906, and from there it was planned to extend it on to Hudson Bay. Actual work was held up a long time because of a controversy as to whether the northern terminus should be at Port Nelson or farther north at Fort Churchill. Port Nelson was finally decided upon in 1912 and work was resumed. As there were no settlements along the route, and as the builders had to carry with them all their supplies and food, the line was pushed northward a short distance at a time, and progress was slow. The plans included a harbour at Port Nelson and the erection there of two four-million bushel wheat elevators. However, the ships loaded with supplies for the new port met with disaster, and later it was learned that the entire appropriation for the railway had been spent leaving the line far from completion. The project was finally abandoned in 1917, when three hundred and thirty-two of the four hundred and twenty-four miles from The Pas to Port Nelson had been built. An irregular service has been since maintained to Mile 214, mostly for the accommodation of miners and hunters.